Little Did I Know

This autobiography in the form of a philosophical diary narrates the events of a life that have produced the distinctive kind of writing associated with Stanley Cavell's name. Cavell reflects on his journey from early childhood in Atlanta, through his musical studies at UC Berkeley and Julliard, to his subsequent veering off into philosophy at UCLA, his Ph.D. studies at Harvard, and his half century of teaching. While Cavell's academic work has often incorporated autobiographical elements, Little Did I Know speaks to the American experience in general. It has much to say about the particularities of growing up in an immigrant family and offers glimpses of lesser known aspects of university life in the second half of the twentieth century. At the same time, Cavell's interests and career have brought him into contact with a range of influential and unusual people. A number of friends, colleagues, and acquaintances figure prominently or in passing over the course of this book, occasioning engaging portraits. J.L. Austin, Ernest Bloch, Roger Sessions, Thomas Kuhn, Robert Lowell, Rogers Albritton, Seymour Shifrin, John Rawls, Bernard Williams, W. V. O. Quine, and Jacques Derrida are no longer with us; but Cavell also pays homage to the living: Michael Fried, John Harbison, Marc Shell, Milton Babbitt, Barry Stroud, John Hollander, Hilary Putnam, and Terrence Malick. In keeping with Cavell's philosophical style, the drift of the narrative registers the decisiveness of the relatively unknown and the purely accidental as well. Cavell has produced a trail of some eighteen published books that range from treatments of individual writers (Wittgenstein, Austin, Emerson, Thoreau, Heidegger, Shakespeare and Beckett) to studies in aesthetics, epistemology, moral and political philosophy, cinema, opera, and religion. Here he accounts for the discovery and scope of his intellectual passions and shares them with his readers.

ISBN 080477014X   Pages 560 ISBN13 9780804770149 (What's this?)   Weight (grammes) 998 Publisher Stanford University Press   Published in Palo Alto Imprint Stanford University Press   Series title Cultural Memory in the Present Format Hardback   Height (mm) 231 Publication date 15 Sep 2010   Width (mm) 160 DEWEY 191   Spine width (mm) 38 DEWEY edition DC22   Academic level General

Part 1		(July 2 through July 17, 2003)		1
		Catheterizing the heart.---What is a life in brief, and perhaps not so brief?		5
		Telling the story philosophically.---Hence to whom?		9
		Receiving new names at Ellis Island in 1904 or 1905.---My father and my mother, rage and silence		16
		Atlanta.---An inexplicable retreat from Paradise.---Rage and disorder		18
		Being moved away from the south to the north side, I learn that some man is an island		21
		Mother and son and pianos.---Backstage and outside Atlanta's Fox Theater.---A crushing beauty.---Mysteries natural and unnatural		24
		Sacramento and pawnshops.---My father visited by something called attacks		27
		Playing and running into a street, I am struck unconscious by a car.---My left ear fatefully damaged		32
		Ear treatments and further torments		35
		Convalescence and magic uncles		38
		A mountain in Tennessee		43
		A cemetery for an association		45
		My mother's cooking.---Life and death in my mother's hands
Part 2		(July 20 through July 28, 2003)		54
		It it the wrong religion or the wrong age that has marked me for exclusion?		57
		Musical evenings at home.---For whom does one perform?---Economics of narration.---Receiving a clarinet.---Ill-gotten gains.---The end of piano lessons		67
		The catheterization of my heart is performed.---I teach myself the saxophone one day and earn money playing it the next night.---Becoming the leader of the high school dance band dissolves my social impasse		75
		Cautionary tales		77
		Three educational events in a school yard		81
		We move from the south side to the north side of Atlanta as I turn seven.---As I turn nine we move to Sacramento.---It is not only my clothes that are wrong		84
		More...

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